Category: books

Planning your wedding? The book, “The Handcrafted Wedding” is being held up by this bride on her wedding day as today’s photo pick. The photo was captured by Michelle Gardella Photography and is just one from this Americana Inspired Wedding. The Handcrafted Wedding is described as, “Bursting with creativity and fun! The Handcrafted Wedding is an idea book with more than 340 concepts, ideas, styles, and projects to take your wedding day from mundane to magnificent. The details are the heart of a wedding and in The Handcrafted Wedding you’ll discover how to incorporate the romantic details of your unique story into an event that captures the essence of your relationship.” By author Emma Arendoski, Editor of Emmaline Bride. Buy the Book Here!

The Handcrafted Wedding Bride

Before you tie the knot, you want to know your partner really well, right? We’ve rounded up four top books every bride should read before the wedding to focus on what really matters: a long and happy marriage. We’ve included one on love, one on happiness, a book on inspiring yourself, and a fun book you can work on together. Find out what made our list…

Books Every Bride Should Read Before the Wedding

This book covers the languages of love, pretty appropriate for a couple getting married, no? As the book states, “By learning the five love languages, you and your spouse will discover your unique love languages and learn practical steps in truly loving each other. Chapters are categorized by love language for easy reference, and each one ends with specific, simple steps to express a specific language to your spouse and guide your marriage in the right direction.”

Bride-to-be, Anna, wrote to us asking about wedding readings from books. She says, “What are your favorite wedding readings from books? We’re planning a book-themed wedding so we’d love to pick a few from the classics.” Great question, Anna, and a fantastic way to plan a themed wedding! Read on to see which readings from books made our must-have list for your wedding…

Wedding Readings from Books

1. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

“Once for all, I knew to my sorrow, often and often, if not always, that I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be. Once for all; I loved her none the less because I knew it, and it had no more influence in restraining me, than if I had devoutly believed her to be human perfection.”

“The future belongs to hearts even more than it does to minds. Love, that is the only thing that can occupy and fill eternity. In the infinite, the inexhaustible is requisite.

Love participates of the soul itself. It is of the same nature. Like it, it is the divine spark; like it, it is incorruptible, indivisible, imperishable. It is a point of fire that exists within us, which is immortal and infinite, which nothing can confine, and which nothing can extinguish. We feel it burning even to the very marrow of our bones, and we see it beaming in the very depths of heaven…

What a grand thing it is to be loved! What a far grander thing it is to love! The heart becomes heroic, by dint of passion. It is no longer composed of anything but what is pure; it no longer rests on anything that is not elevated and great. An unworthy thought can no more germinate in it, than a nettle on a glacier. The serene and lofty soul, inaccessible to vulgar passions and emotions, dominating the clouds and the shades of this world, its follies, its lies, its hatreds, its vanities, its miseries, inhabits the blue of heaven, and no longer feels anything but profound and subterranean shocks of destiny, as the crests of mountains feel the shocks of earthquake.

If there did not exist some one who loved, the sun would become extinct.”

“I have for the first time found what I can truly love – I have found you. You are my sympathy – my better self – my good angel; I am bound to you with a strong attachment. I think you good, gifted, lovely: a fervent, a solemn passion is conceived in my heart; it leans to you, draws you to my center and spring of life, wraps my existence about you – and, kindling in pure, powerful flame, fuses you and me in one.”

“At night, there was the feeling that we had come home, feeling no longer alone, waking in the night to find the other one there, and not gone away; all other things were unreal. We slept when we were tired and if we woke the other one woke too so one was not alone. Often a man wishes to be alone and a woman wishes to be alone too and if they love each other they are jealous of that in each other, but I can truly say we never felt that. We could feel alone when we were together, alone against the others. We were never lonely and never afraid when we were together.”

“He’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same… my great thought in living is himself. If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger. I should not seem a part of it.”

“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but really loves you, then you become Real.”

“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.

“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”

“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”

“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

“‘I am,’ he said. He was staring at me, and I could see the corners of his eyes crinkling. ‘I’m in love with you, and I’m not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things. I’m in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we’re all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we’ll ever have, and I am in love with you.’”

“Do I love you? My God, if your love were a grain of sand, mine would be a universe of beaches… I have stayed these years in my hovel because of you. I have taught myself languages because of you. I have made my body strong because I thought you might be pleased by a strong body. I have lived my life with only the prayer that some sudden dawn you might glance in my direction. I have not known a moment in years when the sight of you did not send my heart careening against my rib cage. I have not known a night when your visage did not accompany me to sleep. There has not been a morning when you did not flutter behind my waking eyelids…

I love you. Okay? Want it louder? I love you. Spell it out, should I? I ell-oh-vee-ee why-oh-you. Want it backward? You love I.”

Oh, how can you forget about one of the most beloved stories, The Notebook?

“I am nothing special; just a common man with common thoughts, and I’ve led a common life. There are no monuments dedicated to me and my name will soon be forgotten. But in one respect I have succeeded as gloriously as anyone who’s ever lived: I’ve loved another with all my heart and soul; and to me, this has always been enough.”

What do you think of these wedding readings? Are you using book inspired readings at your wedding?

Hello, dear readers of Emmaline Bride! We noticed a new following on Facebook (welcome!), along with plenty of new readers of our newsletter! With all of these pretty new faces, we wanted to take an opportunity to tell you a little more about the handmade wedding shop, also known as The Marketplace. If you’re planning a handmade wedding, Emmaline Bride is the place to be! We’re the world’s largest handmade wedding shop + blog, featuring the best handmade artists, items, ideas, DIY projects, Real Weddings, The Bridal Book, and more. If you want to shop for your handmade wedding, The Marketplace is the ultimate shop! It’s a curated collection of the best artists and the most beautiful items: essentially everything you could want for your perfect day is all in one place. Read on to find out more about The Marketplace and how it can help you plan a beautiful day…

Handmade Wedding Shop: The Marketplace

When you visit The Marketplace, you’ll see newly added items on the homepage. Today, for instance, we spotted these beautiful items:

You’ll also see a navigation bar at the top with ten main categories: there’s accessories, attire, books, cake, decor, favors, flowers, gifts, jewelry, and paper goods. On the main page, you can browse by picture (see below).

Handmade Wedding Shop — Browse:

Everything in the handmade wedding shop is handcrafted with love by a talented artist. Each of our artists are hand-selected to bring you the very best! (If you’re an artist and want to join, you can apply here.) Ready to shop? Head over there now!

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Thank You

Also, we just wanted to thank you all for being readers! We couldn’t do any of this without you… we love and appreciate you all. To all of our wedding vendors — thanks for sharing your work with our readers! It’s a pleasure to have the opportunity to share such talented people on our site.